


The Voice Under All Silences

by RavensWing



Series: i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 13:59:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2470751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensWing/pseuds/RavensWing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Emma, being alone can be difficult, but being in love is terrifying. </p><p>Set after 04x03.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Voice Under All Silences

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing.
> 
> Title is, again, E.E. Cummings. 
> 
> Because what OUaT needs is more smutty angst. Clearly. Porn with kind of a plot. Mostly not. 
> 
> Second in a series.

Someone once told her that anger is a secondary emotion. That one only experiences anger to cover another emotion altogether, a defense mechanism. She cannot recall at the moment who exactly said that to her, but she does remember telling them to fuck off the moment after. Now she wishes she could forget the whole thing because she is furious and all she can think of is what exactly she is trying to cover up.

She can still feel the stretch of blunt fingers inside of her, breath searing her neck, and it makes her stomach roil. Somehow her mission to make sure he knew his place ended up with him putting her in hers. The balance of power between them has shifted and it makes her uneasy which in turn makes her furious.

Why couldn’t he ever just listen to what she said?

She stalks out of Granny’s with every intention of falling into bed and never getting out of it. She is bone tired, head aching, but there will be no rest for her yet. He is waiting.

“Swan! Don’t make a man drink alone.” He is bright, cheerful even, with that wink in his eye that reminds her how he fucked her with the very hand that is holding his drink.

“I’m not in the mood for a drink - or a man.” She blasts past him with hopes that he won’t follow, but knowing he will.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you today,” there is the creak of leather behind her and speeds up. She just can’t - “and I know you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but at some point -” His hook snags her arm, turning her back to him. She doesn’t have the energy to fight it, to fight him. “Even though we’re quite different - you’ve got to trust me.”

She’s used to his impromptu speeches by now, immune to them mostly, but a bubble of hysteria bursts in her chest at this one. It hits too close to the where she was scrambling to burn her feelings to ashes. The point of his hook pokes her side and she leans into the pain like an anchor that keeps her from shattering.

“That’s what you think this is about? That I don’t trust you?”

She is too damn angry to be anything but direct and a dark cloud flashes over his expression. For one instant, just one, she thinks he may be just as tired and angry as she is.

“Is that not what this is about?”

“Of course I trust you.” Words colored red with anger, frustration, because she does. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he'd shifted from enemy to ally and that is easier to admit than anything else at the moment.

An unspoken signal passes between them, subtle as an earthquake, because this is where this conversation should end.

Usually, this is where he senses that she is more cornered grizzly than woman and stops pushing. Usually, this is where if he tried to continue she ran because entertaining anything he could say after this point is dangerous. Usually, but not tonight.

Tonight he looks at her, eyes all sharp edges cutting through her. “Then why do you keep pulling away from me?”

She isn't in the habit of being honest. It never serves her well, but this is every bit a dare as it was to kiss him on Neverland a lifetime ago. She can't back down from a challenge anymore than he can resist laying them down.

She doesn't stop to think what those words could mean until they escape her mouth: “Because everyone I’ve ever been with is dead!"

The world goes still. He just cocks his head to the side and looks at her with eyes that won't let her leave it at that. He pulls the truth from her like venom from a wound.

"Neal, Grahm, even Walsh. I lost everyone." Her tongue sticks. The last words are the most difficult, they matter the most, but she is helpless to stop them "I can’t lose you, too.”

Her eyes sting, and she tells herself it is because she is fucking pissed at him for making her say all of that. It is the truth, but not all of it. She is fucking pissed at herself, too. She shouldn’t have entertained his question, shouldn’t have admitted to anything. The balance shifts further in his direction and an anxious vice squeezes her chest. She isn’t ready for this.

He is quiet. That is something she has learned in their time together to be a two edged sword. If his tongue isn't working, his mind is doing double. He looks at her like he understands and that is suffocating.

“Well my love," the way he says those words - _my love_ \- like they are anything but complicated sends her heart skittering. "You don’t have to worry about me.” He smiles and she feels it all the way from her head to her toes before it pools hot and deep at her core. She’d be a damn fool to do anything but worry about him. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s surviving.”

He speaks to her in soft tones, trying to smooth down her frayed edges, but she doesn't want that. She doesn't know what to do with his comfort, his pity, his love. His tenderness sends shockwaves of panic through her because she realizes she likes it. Another burst of anger because she is nowhere near ready for that.

She needs to get away, and quick, but she cannot move. She cannot breathe. It is all too much.

His eyes shift down to her mouth and she knows the kiss is coming. She feels the tension in his hook keeping her from retreat as he steps into her body. He takes instead of asks, his signature. His mouth is scalding against hers and the anger in her chest settles into something deeper in the pit of her stomach.

It would be too easy to sink into this, into him, and never resurface. She can't take that risk. She doesn't have enough heart left to break.

She thinks to pull back, to regain some distance and sanity, but his hand weaves through her hair and that is out of the question. He slants his mouth over hers and slicks out to taste her. Her body reacts to each touch of his tongue, deep and restless in her mouth, and tastes his every desire.

He wants her. He’s made that (and so much more) clear. Before she can consider that she may want him just as much, she pulls back as much as he will let her to catch a breath. He’s gasping for air and she isn’t much better off. In double vision, she sees him. She doesn’t know how his hair got so mussed until she notices her own hand laced around his neck.

She doesn’t remember doing that and that idea scares the hell out of her. She doesn't get lost in kisses, not for anyone, not ever, but she did for him tonight. Her insides quake. Everything about him is terrifying, and her heart pounds in agreement.

She's given him too much. Their careful balance skewed. She needs to take something from him, needs him to feel as off kilter as she does, to regain her control.

“Come here.” She pulls back a bit more, losing her hold of his hair, and dragging him from the street to the shadows.

He follows her backwards march until the scenery mirrors their last encounter. It is he, however, whose back is pressed against cold brick this time. He looks at her, hope written so raw on his face it hurts to look at. She grabs handfuls of leather and leans in.

She avoids his mouth and dives under his jaw. Her lips rasp on scruff, teeth scrap over pulse points, and he rolls his head back against the brick with a groan. His hand reaches out and grasps her hip. He pulls her against him. Even through thick layers of leather and denim, she can feel him hard as a brass pole against her. She grinds against him and he makes a choked noise in the back of his throat.

“Ah - _love_ -” and the power of that gasped word causes a cold sweat to break out on her neck.

She knows how this story plays. She doesn’t do love. She's done it enough before to know it never ends well (even if fairy tales are real). If there is one thing Emma Swan does not do, it is give her heart to someone who is so clearly destined to break it.

She knows what she has to do.

Her fingers scrape down his front until they find the laces of his pants.

His hand is back in her hair in a flash, pulling her mouth off his skin to meet his eyes.

"Emma, what are you..." he doesn't finish because she gets his pants loose enough to reach inside and cup him.

It is hot, hotter than the rest of him, and big. The weight of him sends heat between her legs. His eyes shoot wide, blown out and breathless, like he cannot believe this is happening. Like this is everything he's ever wanted, like she is everything he's ever wanted, and it won’t be the first time she’ll use a man’s desire against him.

She takes an experimental tug, rougher than necessary. He chokes on a gasp, Adam’s apple erratic in his throat. She feels the power she has over him in every fiber of her body and it feels good, it feels right. She does it again - harder still.

His body convulses, tongue darting out to wet his lips, and: "Bloody hell, Emma-!"

She adjusts her grip, shoving at the leather to draw him out fully, and strokes again. His gaze is unfaltering even as he trembles against her. He looks at her like he is tripping tumblers, trying to unlock just why she is doing this, just what this could mean. She doesn’t like that because she isn’t ready to admit there is anything living underneath the flames of anger in her chest. It makes the fleeting control she feels sputter, and that just will not do.

She ducks onto her knees, out from under his locksmith stare, before he can stop her. She runs the flat of her tongue along the length of him and then swallows him whole. His hook slams into the wall beside her. The fingers still in her hair bunch to a fist, but she stays on him fast.

“Jesus - fuck - Emma!” His thighs shake under her palms.

In response, she takes him deeper and his hook scratches up the brick. With his every gasping breath, each stutter of his hips, she feels the balance returning. She glances up through lashes and sees him staring down at her. His face is full of open adoration, and she cannot stand it. She keeps her eyes on his and uses her teeth.

This time his head slams back against the brick and she does it again just to prove a point. She isn’t sure what that point is, but she love the way her stomach clenches when he sounds like he is drowning.

“Emma - love - I can’t…” He tries to pull her back, to stop her, but she won’t allow it.

She finishes what she starts.  

She does the dirtiest trick she knows, one she learned on Neal and mastered on Walsh, and that is the end of him. He arches, a trail of obscenities raining from his mouth, it is only a few seconds after that before he is done.

She slips back, hand in her hair coming loose, and spits him out onto the asphalt. She finds her feet, knees and jaw aching, and takes a good look at him. He is quivering and breathless and she knows she’s payed him full measure for their last encounter.    

He reaches for her, but she steps back. His face resolves past confusion and pain to a frightful placidity that says he understands all too well.

This is war.

“Ah. So that’s what this was.” He pushes off of the wall, unsteady at best, and tucks himself back into his pants. “I’d rather hoped….” He stops himself and she is glad for that.

“Now we’re even.” She says like that is even close to the truth and he chuckles.

“I wouldn’t say that, Swan.” He finishes his laces and looks at her. “After all, I haven’t had my mouth on you yet.”

The way he says ‘yet’ makes her knees weak, and she needs to get out of her. Now.

Before she can make her escape, he is on her. Hook hard on her hip, arm an iron bar around her waist, and his mouth plundering hers. He looses her as soon as he’d held her, lips smacking apart, and she staggers at the immediacy of it all.  

“Strawberries.” His mouth turns up a smirk, but it is missing his normal flair.

She spat again. “Fish piss.”

He laughed deep in his throat, dark and dangerous. “Somehow seems appropriate for a pirate, now doesn’t it love?”

He looks at her like he is all too willing to show her just how much of a pirate he could be, and her stomach turns. She needs to leave, and this time she doesn’t wait for another reason to stop her. She runs as fast as her feet will carry her, not stopping when she hears him call out after her. She doesn’t slow down until she is safe behind the locked door of her family’s apartment. 

Everyone else is already asleep, a detail for which she is grateful. She doesn’t have it in her to try to explain where in the hell she has been.

It isn’t until later when she is alone in bed, shaking under blankets but not for cold, that she realizes just what her anger had been hiding. Fire long fizzles to ashes, and the truth is just sitting right there in her heart plain as day.

 _My love_ \- he'd said and she sees it, feels it, and she is terrified.

 


End file.
